Viola Gienger

Viola Gienger (Bluesky – LinkedIn – X) is Washington Senior Editor for Just Security and a research scholar at NYU School of Law with a focus on foreign affairs, U.S. foreign and defense policy, international security, and development.  She previously served as senior editor/writer at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, where she worked on issues including violent extremism, gender, and religion, and conducted research and program strategy work on Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine. A career journalist, she was an editor and reporter at Bloomberg News, including covering the State Department and the Pentagon for five years.

Gienger lived and worked for seven years in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Balkans, five years managing training programs and consulting for independent media in transition, and two years as a freelance journalist. She has reported from more than 30 countries, including in the Middle East and Asia, and has appeared as a guest commentator and moderator in television, radio, and podcasts. In October 2023, she gave the National Security Distinguished Lecture at the Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs at the University of Tennessee. In Fall 2024, she joined the advisory board of the Baker School’s Center for National Security and Foreign Affairs.

Her freelance work has included writing and editing for the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, and the Wilson Center, and serving as guest national security editor at The Cipher Brief. Her writing also has been published in the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy’s Fletcher Security Review, the Atlantic Council’s Ukraine Alert, Ozy, the Chicago Tribune, Newhouse’s Religion News Service, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Transitions Online and Al-Monitor.

She is a judge in national journalism contests and a member of the National Press Club, Journalism & Women Symposium and the Society of Professional Journalists, where she serves on the board of the Washington DC SDX Foundation, which grants scholarships to journalism students.